Our Solar Home Systems – Products and Pricing in a volatile trading environment
18 March 2025
We operate in a particularly volatile global trading environment at the moment. This can impact both the availability of certain SHS products and their prices, which may fluctuate from time to time. You should keep this in mind when you are considering a purchase.
Our pricing can be impacted by a number of factors – the impact of tariffs elsewhere, general supplier costs, changing import duties and taxes within Zimbabwe, and of course any significant exchange rate fluctuations between the British Pound and the US Dollar.
Recent weakness in the US Dollar has enabled us to secure current stock at the prices you see today at launch. Product prices were likely to have been higher, as we indicated at the UK-Zimbabwe Expo in Birmingham last October.
In terms of the products, our strategic distribution partner in Zimbabwe is Kumusha Power. The market leading specialist in SHS distribution across Zimbabwe, having sold over 15,000 units since 2021. The product suppliers are d.light solar (American) and SPARK energy (European). Both are well established in the SHS sector of the solar energy market.
The products are shipped from China, with ‘indicative’ lead times of 6-8 weeks from order of a shipment. Therefore timely local product delivery within Zimbabwe relies on available warehouse stock in Harare. This in turn means that there are key logistical points at which fresh product shipments need to be ordered to replenish local stock levels. It is at this ordering stage when costs are determined by the key trading conditions at that time.
d.light Solar and SPARK energy are two of the leading suppliers of Solar Home Systems within Africa
The other point to consider is that technology advances and product development strategy will drive innovation. Just like the mobile phone market, new solar energy products will emerge, sometimes to replace established favourites. We believe the ‘core component set’ for all the current solar energy products is likely to remain consistent for some time. However, we plan to expand the range over time, and we are actively looking at new product options which could potentially be introduced through Kumusha World.
We hope this information will help you both with your current SHS purchase decisions and inform your understanding of any product and / or pricing changes you may see in the future.
If you have any questions about Kumusha World, or suggestions as to which products you would like to see made available in the future then simply drop us an email at info@kumushaworld.com – we look forward to hearing from you.
Kumusha World Team
